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学問的視点​The Nerdy Overview of the Project

This project focuses on the politicisation and economics of yoga through an analysis of how the transglobal yoga industry incorporates our perennial search for meaning, identity and community into its marketing strategies. Primarily, this is achieved through analysing the shared elements of the narrative apparatus that rely upon the Sanskrit episteme, i.e. the justified ‘true’ beliefs promoted through Sanskrit literature. Building upon my PhD research, which in part demonstrated how one yoga organisation positioned itself and created a sense of authenticity and legitimacy within a volatile, competitive and unregulated global yoga marketplace, a key phrase emerged, which is the ‘Vedic way of life’. This phrase has distinct variants but is an ubiquitous idea that deserves more attention. This is because this phrase is an ubiquitous and innocuous, essentialised core component of a consumable, ‘authentic’ yoga lifestyle that has, until now, not been the focus within the field of yoga studies. This is quite surprising, as a ‘Vedic lifestyle’ represents to many a previous and ‘purer’ golden age, and is built upon the cultural practices and Sanskrit canon from the Vedic period (ca. 1200-500 BCE), which is the earliest strata of Hinduism. This particular narrative is used to justify the perceived authenticity for a contemporary utopian reconstruction of a ‘Vedic way of life’. By invoking the past, the future becomes tangible in the present.

The Vedic period is when the oldest scriptures of Hinduism were composed in Sanskrit. Today, the adjective ‘Vedic’ (just like 'yogic') has become a floating signifier that can, and does, mean different things to different groups. Understanding these differences and similarities is central to this research project. Generally, ‘Vedic’ is used to denote a perceived, previous and ‘purer’ Sanskritically-derived, Brahminically-hegemonic golden age. While the aspirations of the multibillion-dollar, heterogenous, transglobal yoga industry might at first seem to run counter to the aspirations of Hindu globalism, it is through this research that I demonstrate how these two worlds intersect through the central narrative of the ‘Vedic way of life’ or ‘Vedic lifestyle’.

Even though many yoga studios around the world have fetishised goods, such as: statues and pictures of Hindu deities, and use Sanskrit mantras, either in prayer or to define particular yoga postures; the typical lycra-clad yoga practitioner that frequents such a business generally does not think about Hindu fundamentalism, ethno-religious nationalists and the Indian states expansionist agenda to create a pan-global Hindu world with the help of the global popularity of yoga. Yoga is a key instrument in India’s foreign policy. The seemingly discrete worlds of transglobal yoga and the politics of Hindu globalism are connected through what I refer to as the Sanskrit episteme, i.e. the justified ‘true’ beliefs promoted through Sanskrit literature. This project aims to explore more fully the lived experiences of those inspired by their intersecting interest in Sanskrit, yoga and patriotism. As a counterpoint to secularism and viewed through an utopian framework, identifying the socio-political-religious-economic implications of Indian ethno-religious nationalism, and its relationship to transglobal yoga, will provide a better understanding of the Indian state, which uses its cultural capital as the self-appointed ‘world guru’ (viśva-guru) to guide its soft power diplomacy onto the global stage through such events as World Yoga Day.

Typically, a modern postural yoga practice is seen as an expression of an individual’s apolitically-inflected ‘spiritual’ stance. This is, in part, because of the romantic, ahistorical, and essentialised narrative of the global imagination of yoga, promoted by the Indian state's Ministry of External Affairs, the Ayush Ministry and the Ministry of Tourism, that incorporates an uncritical and apolitical representation of yoga into its narrative. However, since its earliest forms, yoga has been involved in political and cultural revolutions and counter-reformations. This continues today with the Indian state, which is in the process of reconstituting ‘Brand India’ and 'Incredible India 2.0' with the help of its cultural capital in the forms of: spiritual tourism, yoga, Ayurveda, and the wellness industry. These industries account for over USD4 trillion in trade to the global economy.

According to India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, himself an avid yoga practitioner, the self-appointed role of the Indian state is as the ‘world guru’ (viśva-guru). India’s foreign relations agenda involves proselytising and promoting sanātana dharma (‘eternal’ ethical principles), which is the local term used to justify the Hindu expansionists’ perceived moral, cultural and spiritual authority. This concept of dharma is taught in every yoga teacher-training course as an essentialised and central component of yoga-focused lifestyle. The assumed a priori notion of Neo-Vedānta (the primary philosophy of Neo-Hinduism) is that humanity’s ‘true nature’ is divine. The self-appointed role of the Indian state is to proselytise the world and promote sanātana dharma (‘eternal’ ethical principles). Sanātana dharma is the local term used to locate the Hindu globalists’ perceived moral, cultural and spiritual authority. This concept is taught in every yoga teacher course as an essentialised and central component of yoga and an authentic, traditional, and essential 'yogic' or ‘Vedic way of life’. While I am still tracing the genealogical origins of this phrase in English, it likely appeared first in Bengali around the mid-19th century. The earliest account I have in English is from the first decade of the 20th century.

From an expansionist perspective, the promotion of this lifestyle is part of a broader post-colonial pushback against the cultural hegemony of the West and perceived ills of modernity. Yet, at the same time this lifestyle ought also to be seen as an expression of modernity. But what is its perceived value? The general appeal of this shared ideology (by Hindu expansionists and yoga practitioners) is the perception that it is a more sustainable and holistic approach to life. It is part of a broader ‘religious environmentalism’, ‘neo-pagan’ and ‘dharmic ecology’ movement, which is ‘Neo-Hindu’ rather than genuinely ‘Vedic’. This holistic, integral humanist philosophy appeals to the individual concerned with the deleterious effects of hyper-consumption, the rapidly unsustainable depletion of resources and the moral/ethical implications of the neo-liberal project. However, is it really a suitable and viable alternative to neo-liberal capitalism, when its very popularity is a result of the same consumerist forces it simultaneously derides? However, what are the substantive elements of a yoga lifestyle, and how might they differ between countries? Can we say definitively that an East Asian influenced yoga is in some way(s) different to the modern yoga practiced in western countries, or even, the 'home of yoga', India, itself?

All the different types of contemporary yoga fit somewhere between the poles of Modern Postural Yoga and Modern Soteriological Yoga. Along this spectrum, various forms of knowledge are privileged in and through action. This creates discrete ‘worlds’, which can be described as ‘yoga-scapes’. This subfield of the cultural imaginary serves as the locus for the ethnographic enquiry, which uses the transformative spaces of yoga classes, yoga retreats and yoga teacher-training courses as the physical domains where ‘ethnographies of the possible’ will be explored. Methodologically, I will use media specific discourse analysis combined with a grounded theoretical approach, a critical realist epistemology, and ethnographic methods such as participant observation and interviews. I will focus my ethnography within various yoga communities in Japan and India. Also, my cyber-ethnographic data collection will continue to cast a global net. I will also continue my current research in ‘Sanskrit speaking’ villages in India, which are integral components of Imagining Sanskrit Land, as they foster a sense of cultural, religious and national pride through the social imaginary landscape. This project also relies on classical philology, specific media content analysis, discourse analysis, and social media analysis, so that the following questions can be asked: 1) How does the Sanskrit episteme define a traditional and authentic ‘Vedic way of life’? 2) What are the core narratives of the ‘Vedic way of life’? 3) What differences and similarities exist between various ‘Vedic (Yogic) lifestyles’ in the 21st century? 4) What are the social, political, religious, and environmental implications of adhering to a ‘Vedic lifestyle’? What is the perceived value of a ‘Vedic way of life’?

Substantially, this project has two main elements to it that can be defined by geo-political regions. First, I will focus on explicating how the naive pursuit of community, authenticity and meaning through participation in modern, yogic lifestyles, unwittingly and implicitly also facilitate the soft power ambitions of the Indian state. I will also demonstrate what the substantive elements of the global imagination regarding yoga are through analysis of the marketing strategies found in online promotions of yoga courses, classes and retreats. This will lead to a comparison and demonstration of how, where and why the narratives of Hindu expansionism rely upon the same narratives as the transglobal yoga industry.

In the second part of this project I intend to focus specifically on ‘Yoga in Japan’.

While there is a growing body of academic research regarding both the pre-modern origins of 'traditional' yoga and Ayurveda (see the Haṭha Yoga Project and the Entangled Histories of Yoga, Ayurveda and Alchemy in South Asia project), the academic gaze within the field of yoga studies has quite often focused on Western-based yoga practitioners in Western locations. This ethnographic-based research seeks to pivot the gaze and explore the lived experiences of modern yoga practitioners who live in East Asia, or who choose it as a yoga-based tourist destination with a particular focus on Japan. The rationale behind this is that over the past decade, according to the International Yoga Foundation, a 413% increase in Japanese participation in yoga makes it the fasting growing ‘yoga’ country in the world. While there is sophisticated data on the demographics of yoga practitioners and their consumptive practices in the West, there is very little known about ‘Yoga in Japan’.

The appropriateness of this work is that despite a growing interest in global yoga studies, there is much to be learnt and said about yoga and yoga practitioners in East Asia, particularly Japan. Yoga has become a global phenomenon that generates billions of dollars each year in the sale and consumption of particular ‘spiritual’ lifestyles and fetishised goods, such as: yoga mats, clothing and yoga-centric holidays/pilgrimages. This normally finds expression and authentication through different ‘yoga-scapes’. This type of consumption-scape helps modulate the imagined world in which we live in through the commodification of an embodied practice. The flexibility of yoga as a physically-oriented cultural practice allows it to be superimposed, seamlessly it seems, onto local cultures and practices. This further qualifies and stretches the limits of authenticity, cultural appropriation and tradition regarding what yoga is able to represent due to the porous boundaries of the global imagination. This is most evident at the boundary between what is considered 'yogic' versus 'unyogic'.

Some of the more pertinent questions related to yoga in Japan reflect the distant-led consumption of a yogic thought-world and yoga as a bourgeois pursuit. Some guiding questions are: What makes yoga in Japan typically Japanese? How do practitioners of yoga in Japan absorb parts of the global yoga narrative to create meaning, identity, and community? What components of global yoga are rejected, by whom, and why? What aspects of global yoga are reconstituted into new, Japanese ways of understanding? How many different types of yoga styles are there in Japan?

The expected outcome and true merit of this proposal is that it ultimately aims to explicate how ‘Yoga in Japan’ inflects and expresses a global imagination of yoga through a broader discursive context. It triangulates the pursuit of an ‘authentic (Japanese) yogic experience’ through an interdisciplinary lens of classical philology combined with the politics of imagination, the economics of religion, and the sociology of spirituality within the consumption-scape of the Japanese spiritual marketplace.

Yoga is now incorporated into many types of tourism packages. This is generally done to qualify an already existing cultural practice with a ‘spiritual’ ethos. Yoga is now packaged into varying degrees of intensity in many walking holidays around the world. Japan is famous for many things; however, one popular tourist destination is the old pilgrimage trails. Therefore, I intend to also focus on how yoga is mapped onto other tourist packages in Japan. I will do this so that I can understand the broad ways in which yoga is commodified and consumed as part of the multitrillion-dollar global wellness and spiritual tourism industries.

This proposed research requires in-country fieldwork that will involve both the participation in and facilitation of yoga classes and retreats in Japan and India by myself. My aim is to spend various amounts of time in 3-4 Japanese cities attending as many different yoga studios as possible. This is so I can meet as many different yoga practitioners, so that I can privilege their perspectives and lived experiences. The proposed locations are: Kyoto, Osaka, Tokyo, Sapporo, and Kagashima. I also intend to accompany various groups of yoga practitioners to retreats or yoga teacher-training courses in India (This will likely happen in yoga retreat centres in Uttarakhand, Kerala, and Karnataka) and possibly another Asian country, like Cambodia, to document the journeys and experiences of Japanese yoga practitioners abroad. With websites like Yovada, it becomes quite simple to choose a yoga-related holiday destination in just about any part of the world.

The value of the expected outcome of this project will be better understanding of the transcultural exchanges of ideas and flows of capital generated by yoga-related tourism. This has political implications as well, because combined with the economic dimension that Australia, India and Japan share as strong trading partners, the political dimension enters through this exact same phrase, which is operationalised by the Indian state as part of its Hindu expansionist agenda, and includes creating first a Hindu nation, followed thereafter by a pan-global Hindu theocratic state, which can be understood as a Hindu supremacist version of an ISIS caliphate. The promotion of yoga is central to the Indian state’s soft power initiatives and expansionist, foreign policy agenda, which exists as a form of Indian exceptionalism. In an oblique way, this project will help to better understand the implications of the first success story of globalisation, i.e. yoga.

The potential substantive output of this project includes: a few journal articles, a possible monograph, a conference on global yoga, and a documentary short-film series about 'Yoga in Japan'.